David Bury works in development, management, planning and fund raising for nonprofit arts and cultural organizations. Through David Bury & Associates (DB&A), which he founded in 1981, he has helped more than 200 organizations nationwide and in Europe create stronger development-fundraising programs, design and launch organizational capacity-building initiatives, carry out major fundraising initiatives, successfully address leadership transitions, and conduct strategic planning processes.

In addition to his work with DB&A’s client organizations, David is regularly retained to present workshops and to provide consultancies by organizations such as League or American Symphony Orchestras, Arts Presenters, Chamber Music America, Dance USA, National Performance Network, New York State Council on the Arts, and the Philadelphia Music Project, among others.

The National Endowment for the Arts retained David regularly from the late-80s through the mid-90s as a consultant for its Advancement Program. Through that association, he worked with fifteen arts organizations across the nation in designing and implementing strategic organizational plans. David ongoing involvement with organizations such as Ifetayo Cultural Arts Academy, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Center for Black Music Research, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, and Chamber Music America has been instrumental their success and long-term viability.

Prior to forming DB&A, David served for two and one-half years as assistant director of the Vermont Arts Council. Earlier, as executive director of the Brattleboro Music Center, he built the organization’s annual budget in three years from $100,000 to nearly $500,000. He also expanded the Center’s Bach Festival building it into a New England-wide event and produced the Festival’s first New York City production that the “Times” named one of the two finest performances of the Bach Tercentenary Year. He was also a cofounder and a former president of the Green Mountain Consortium for the Performing Arts.

Before becoming involved in the arts, David taught history and economics on the secondary level in Buffalo, NY and Washington, DC; founded an alternative high school in Deerfield, MA; and served as chairman of the Education Department at Windham College, VT. He spent two years working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Chile, where he specialized in urban community development and housing. Later, he trained VISTA volunteers in community development and education throughout portions of the South including Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina. David received a B.A. from Bethany College, W.Va. in 1964 and an M.A.T. from Antioch New England University in 1969.

Stephanie Riven is the principal in The Riven Company, a firm that provides consulting in the areas of capacity building, fundraising and leadership development. Her client list includes, among others, the National Guild for Community Arts Education, Dance Heritage Coalition, College Bound St. Louis, Perry Mansfield Performing Arts Schools and Camps, Joy2Learn, Westminster Conservatory of Music and Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts.

Riven served as a visiting practitioner at Harvard University in the Graduate School of Education, Arts in Education Program in the Winter/Spring semester of 2011. She now serves on the Arts in Education Advisory Council at Harvard.

From 1987 to July 2010, Riven was the founding executive director of the Center of Creative Arts (COCA) in St. Louis, Missouri where she conceptualized, managed and supervised COCA’s growth and development bringing it from a budget of $80,000 to the fifth largest multi-disciplinary community arts center in the country with a budget of $5 million and $16 million in assets. Beginning with 40 children in the first set of classes in 1987, COCA serves 50,000 people annually. The organization received many awards during her tenure including Best Arts Organization and the Excellence in the Arts Award.

Riven’s leadership of staff, faculty and volunteers resulted in the development of COCA’s Arts Education Programs providing over 500 classes, camps and workshops and its Schools and Community Division offering arts education in 50 schools. She also developed COCA’s Urban Arts Program that has been recognized with many awards including the Coming up Taller Award presented by the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities to recognize effective programs that foster the creative and intellectual development of children.

Riven is also credited for developing COCA’s Interchange, one of nine programs in the country selected and supported by the Ford Foundation to increase access to quality integrated arts education for students in the St. Louis Public Schools.

Riven developed and managed the COCA Family Theatre Series presenting dance, music, drama and puppetry and COCA’s Pre-professional Dance Program, a program that recruits, trains and obtains scholarships for talented dance students to attend post-secondary schools. COCA pre-professional students have trained and secured scholarships to attend The Juilliard School, New York University/The Tisch School and New World School for the Arts, among many others. These graduates have joined The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Ballet Hispanico, Trisha Brown Dance Company, Mark Morris Dance Company and Philadanco, among others and performed in many Broadway productions including Fela and the revival of Follies.

In 2007, COCA was selected as one of 12 organizations by Harvard University’s Project Zero for inclusion in a publication entitled The Qualities of Quality: Understanding Excellence in Arts Education that documented the characteristics of high quality arts education.

Under Riven’s leadership, COCA secured major grants from the Wallace Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, as well as broad local and regional support, raising $40 million over the last decade including $10 million in capital funds for a 60,000 square foot addition and renovation to the COCA facility.

Riven has served as a panelist for the Missouri Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has been recognized with Grand Center’s Visionary Arts Award, the YWCA Leader Award and the Lifetime Achievement in the Arts Award given by the Arts and Education Council. She was recently honored by Washington University with a Distinguished Alumni Award.